Go Hard or Go Haul!

Believe it or not, I don’t actually like Mac make-up much. [Yeah, I can tell you don’t believe me.]

But the Semi-Precious Collection was SO pretty. Marbleised multi-coloured glittering domes of wondrousness; a cross between precious minerals, gemstones and cosmic galaxies. I just fell in love with the lot on first sight. Incidentally, swatches on the Internet just DO NOT compare. They make them look gritty and dull and sheer, but in real life, they are shimmery multi-dimensional wondrousness.

And I went accordingly overboard. Before I got in the store, I only wanted the Golden Gaze eye shadow (the outright gold star of the collection) and Pearl Skinfinish. Such is the power of a great shop assistant! And the allure of these babies in person!

I’m still in the ‘bring them out and stroke lovingly’ stage of ownership – they’re just too pretty to touch! I said to my boyfriend I should have bought two of each, one to use and one to look at; I was only half-joking. So these are photos to preserve the beauty!

Mineralize Eye Shadows in Golden Gaze, Hint Of Sapphire, Jade’s Fortune and Clarity. I know others have complained about the lack of pigmentation, but for me, the lightness is what makes these so useable and great for my fair skin. They all shimmer different colours in different lights, like magic. Stunning!

Bobbi Brown aren’t exactly known for being exciting but they do great quality neutrals and this palette absolutely epitomises that. I LOVE the classy packaging – in the words of the awesome Alex Perry, it looks expensive (say with Aussie accent for full effect)! I love how compact is it, with the pull-out drawer, and the shades are all complimentary browns, golds and bronzes. Great for travelling and creating easy lovely natural looks.

I’ve recently got into The Balm, which is now sold at Sasa. It’s an American brand with retro packaging and witty names, kind of a B-List Benefit. After learning my beloved Benefit Georgia was discontinued, I have been on the lookout for a similar peachy blush. The Balm’s Hot Mama blush had quite a lot of good write-ups (including from blush queen herself Jenn)… and it all escalated from there!

I received the Shady Lady Eye Shadow (Mischievous Marissa, a lovely glittering beige) as a free gift for purchasing two The Balm products; I also got a Read My Lips lipstick in Letter To The Editor (a shimmering bronzed berry). Next, I got a free It Girl Lip Gloss for buying two of their Sexpot Mineral Overshadows. The latter are highly-pigmented loose powders in No Money, No Honey (a light bright gold) and Work Is Overrated (pink champagne), with gorgeous 50s pin-ups on the lids. I blame these on Vicki getting me hooked on L’Oreal’s intense Infallible eye shadows, which aren’t available in HK, although these are much less adventurous colours!

Meanwhile, the baked Pupa Luminys Eye Shadow on the left is a Semi-Precious hangover. There were no really nice purples in the Mac collection, so this is the result!

I also got these two Canmake Jewel Eye Shadows in a very glittery gold and a very glittery melon. I had been lusting after Benefit Creaseless Creams but these were about a third of the price, whilst make-up queen Jenn recommended them as cheap Jill Stuart eye jellies! Sold! Plus, a freebie Sasa Garden Fairy hand cream.

After my wonderful day at Elemis Day Spa, I wanted to buy some of their products and kept reading about this gift set in the UK magazines my mum sent me. This gorgeous leopard-print Elemis Safari Traveller is designed by Alice Temperley (only one of my favourite designers!) and I thought it would be brilliant for carrying all my toiletries for travelling. It didn’t disappoint in person – nice and hefty and again, a touch of the Alex Perry (i.e. expensive!)

It comes stuffed with seven Elemis miniatures that I can’t wait to get stuck into (including the Papaya Peel I enjoyed so much during my facial) and a percentage goes to charity, so what’s not to love? Sadly, it’s not being sold in Hong Kong so I purchased it from Lookfanastic.com, who offer free (and speedy!) international shipping.

I couldn’t just buy one thing from Lookfantastic though! So popped the Urban Decay Ammo Eye Shadow Palette in there too. I decided on buying this rather than several of their individual eye shadows (which I love), which would have ended up costing much more. Another typically fabulous and unusual array of colours from UD and in a very pretty box too!

I’ve been busy putting together a Hello Kitty birthday package for Aimee and sadly for my wallet, that means I’ve been swept along on the Sanrio steamroller of cuteness too! I bought a Cinnamoroll folder and two tins to hold all my eye pencils. They’re so lovely, they cheer me up just by seeing them!

And too cute not to show you some close-ups! I particularly love the Cinnamoroll pencil tin – the soft dusky colours are so haute! This is the sort of crazy-pretty-silly-cute-loveliness I missed so much when I lived in England; I used to have so much of it when I was young here so I’m just resuming my collection!

Whilst Aimee’s weakness is Hello Kitty, mine is Stitch. I just can’t get enough of that cute blue bug-eyed little alien! I’ll probably do a post documenting all my Stitch stuff, as there’s lots of it, but here are my three latest little buddies. Yes, that is a Soy Bean on his head. And no, I don’t know why either – but it sure as hell is cute!

More non make-up goodies thanks to my Kwai Fong shopping spree with BFF Mirander, including cheap and cute headbands, beautiful earrings and Miffy propelling pencils. I love that mini padlock on the headband and who could possibly resist watering cans on earrings?! Not me, that’s for sure!

Gwen Stefani is one of my style icons and I’ve loved the super-kawaii bottles she’s been putting out for her Harajuku Lovers perfume range but have so far resisted as, apart from my trusty Chanel No. 5, I don’t use scents. But resistance finally crumbled in the face of this limited edition G Of The Sea fragrance – IT’S A MERMAID. Amazing.

And finally… no haul of mine is complete without nail polish, right? Firstly, some pa nail polishes, a Japanese brand with tiny bottles but a rainbow of colours. I picked up some of the more unique colours – a silver glitter with antique-rose-copper sequins and a purple with a gold shimmer, plus this charcoal holographic polish I found in CitySuper.

A reader, fellow HK polish and holo addict CaCa, tipped me off about some amazing undiscovered BK holographic nail varnishes. Well, she didn’t need to tell me twice – I was there in a flash to get my stash of rainbows in an (admittedly tiny) bottle!

I already showed you the NYX Jumbo Eye Pencils I bought from the “Make-Up Fiesta” (read more about that hyperbole here!) so, since I have no idea when I’ll get round to trying them all, here are all the NYX nail polishes I bought too. Are those flakies i.e. amazing shreds of rainbow awesomeness, I see before me?! And some multi-coloured glitter and duochromes too!

So as you can ascertain, I went hard AND went haul! Now for a rest I think!

Well, I only intended to get Golden Gaze and Pearl and look what happened! They’re so much nicer in real life! Damn them!

The assistant in Sasa applied Hot Mama on me in the shop, it’s quite nice as it has a bit of shimmer in, but it’s a bit darker than my all-time love Georgia! You should ask the Blush Queen Jenn too, as it’s definitely one she has in her collection!

G Of The Sea – SO cute. I’ve always wanted a bottle but held off but I literally couldn’t resist. It does actually smell quite nice too. They’ve recently re-launched the line and rejuvenated all the scents and they smell much better and less artificial and cheap than they did before. I think G Of The Sea is limited edition so get it whilst you can!

& I love the Elemis Traveller too! I think you could even get away with using it as a handbag tbf – the products are a bonus! x

Good grief! I thought they were dodgy pork pies in their boxes at first! And when you opened them up, I then thought the mineralised eyeshadows looked like those popping candies that I used to get from the local newsagent. Sorry, I don’t know what I’m talking about here.

Thanks for commenting! I think some HK stores still have Warmth of Coral (it’s a blush right?) if you have any contacts over here that can hook you up! Don’t get me looking at more swatches though… I’ll end up wanting to buy more!

I got G Of The Sea at Sogo CWB. I also saw it at Wing On in Sheung Wan. It’s supposed to be Limited Edition so might have sold out… no idea how popular her fragrances are here! Good luck on tracking it down! x

Hey Rach, you mentioned on my blog that you managed to find Gosh Holo in Watson’s? how long ago is this? I am even asking my bf to check out the Tai Po (where he works) branch for me but sadly, they don’t stock Gosh LOL

It was quite a while ago TBH! But like I said, I’d been before and they definitely DID NOT HAVE either Holo or Rainbow then one day I went in for something else and there they were!

If you go on Gosh Cosmetics HK FB page, they hv a list of all locations of the Watsons that sell either their make-up or their skincare (or both), written in Chinese though, so you could try working your way through those if you’re going places nearby them! If you ask on their FB page, they just ask you to check Captiol Centre branch as it’s the biggest on HK Island.

Rach: Thx for the reply! I actually already have asphalt but mine doesn’t look like that! Your bottle looks more colourful and seems to have more glitter than the one I have. I guess maybe another version or variance batch to batch! Thx again! I was going crazy on the net looking for it but all for naught!

These are my first NYX polishes and I’ve not even worn them yet so I don’t really have any experience of the brand. But even from the other NYX photo, those two turquoise ones are meant to be the same polish! The aqua on the right is a lot more vibrant and the flakies looked loads bigger than the other (so I got them both hehe)!

I’d say in real life, my Asphalt doesn’t look quite that blinged out – and then again, that probably means all the glitter will be stuck to the bottle and not actually in the polish! I’ll let you know when I try it and see what it looks like on the nail – probably yet another entirely different story!